Questionable
by nycroft
Summary: So I wrote a big long one shot from Matt's pov. About Near. And Mello. And Near's seemingly nonexistant sexuality. Rated K for language ,,, have fun i guess


alkgfajksdfljf. What is this 3,000+ word monstrosity? Jesus fuck this took literally three weeks to write (KICK ME IN THE NUTS) and my computer kept crashing so I kept losing my work. Gross.

So uh. Yh. Have fun. This is a very very VERY rough draft, but I just really wanted to get this idea down. I like Matt and I think he makes for a great narrarator. This is supposed to be set after the series is over, after Matt's death. Don't ask me how he's speaking if he's dead, because I have no clue.

ps magical neko-neko len len kaga-senpai (I MEAN U LENNY) : howdy

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No matter how quizzically distant Near thought he was, no matter how reclusive, secretive, or stupidly cut off from the world he forced himself to be, I was always vaguely aware of his emotional state. He always seemed to carry himself like some superior being, like he was above the trivial minds of the other children at the orphanage, even though he himself was nothing but a little boy. Near, N, Nate River, it was all the same - the quiet white-haired boy who was always number one.

Well, that is, until Mello got involved, and his facade began to slip, revealing just how much of a child he really was.

Maybe I should start from the beginning. My name is, or _was_, rather, Mail Jeevas, but back then I was called Matt. I lived most of my adolescent life in an orphanage called Wammy's house alongside Mello, Near, and dozens of other extremely intelligent children collected from around the world in hopes of becoming the successor to the ever-famous L. Even though I myself was never interested in becoming the next L, that was the only thing that seemed to matter to Mello, even though he was second in line behind Near. That was just the way things always were. Near came first, Mello came second, and I came third.

Maybe that was why Mello had been so blind. To him, L was the only thing that mattered, and he could never accept that he wasn't good enough to be number one. Or so he thought.

Mello was never very far behind Near. Sometimes they were matched stride for stride-until Mello got emotional and Near took a half-step ahead, giving Mello the second-place title. It was really kind of stupid, really. I could never understand why he even wanted to be L, but of course I'd never tell him that, because he'd throttle me for it, no doubt. It was kind of infuriating, though, when Mello would constantly beat himself up for something silly like getting a ninety-nine percent grade on a test while Near got one hundred. You'd assume I'd try to comfort him, being his best friend and all, but I usually didn't. Mello knew he had potential, and he knew what he was good at, and feeding his ego would only make him more of a hot-headed dick than he already was. I think the problem was he didn't understand _Near._ He overestimated the kid, making him out to be some kind of demon in an angel's body, blaming him for all the bad things that happened to him, when in reality Near didn't care about scores and titles that much at all.

What Near really cared about was Mello.

That much was obvious. Even someone who had no background knowledge of the information could tell Near cared about Mello. It was obvious in the way he stared at him with those empty eyes, the way he tried to get Mello to cooperate (to no success), in the way he dubbed him with the name "Dear Mello." Of course, that idiot had thought he was only doing it to spite him, to belittle him, and it only made him angrier, but I could always see the sincerity in his blank face, no matter how barely present it was. The only person who didn't know that much was Mello. He thought Near's only purpose in life was to beat Mello, the same way his purpose was to beat Near. He honestly believed Near hated him as much as he hated the poor boy. For such a smart kid, he really was an idiot sometimes.

No, Near never hated Mello. Even when Mello screamed at him in frustration, gave him terrible nicknames, treated him like crap, and even beat him up a few times, Near never once hated Mello. Now, I've never known that much about Near, and back at Wammy's I didn't understand about ninety percent of the stuff he said and I never cared enough to try and figure him out, but with maturity comes a whole lot of intelligence, and I'm pretty sure I know why Near did what he did, why he didn't hate Mello after all the shit he put him through. I could very well be wrong, of course, and it's just one of many possibilities, but I think this one is most plausible.

Near couldn't hate Mello. Near _loved_ Mello.

I know, I know, I'm really not trying to pull the whole "gay love" twist here. I'm not trying to make this some hyper-sexualised romance story for hormonal teenaged girls. Just-hear me out, okay?

Gender boundaries were never that strict in Wammy's. To us, we were too intelligent not to realize that there was no difference between girls and boys and that your significant other was not limited to the opposite sex. There were kids who were born as one gender but identified as the other, there were kids who didn't have a gender at all, there were kids who like girls and kids who liked boys and kids who like everything under the sun. So it isn't that insane of an idea that Near wasn't one hundred percent into girls anyways.

Ever since Near arrived at Wammy's, he knew emotions would only hold him back. He knew that impulsiveness slurred logic and biased decisions just weren't an option for a detective such as L. He knew that if he fell in love, it could be used against him, and it would eventually be his downfall, so he forced himself not to be emotional. If he was really going to succeed in L's place, he was going to need a blank slate to work with.

That's what I like to think. I like to think he wasn't just born a heartless prick, and that there was actually a reason he was so cold.

Either way, Near was not a sentimental person, if you put it simply. He didn't need support, he didn't need friendship, and he definitely didn't need love, so why would he love Mello?

I'm getting to that part.

Mello and Near are possibly the two most opposite people I ever knew, even more so now that I know all this then when we were kids. Near was quiet and cold and passive, Mello was passionate and expressive and usually pretty pissed off about something or other. Near didn't seem to care about anything other than playing with his toys, which was only partially true. He didn't mind when Mello would occasionally get a better mark than him, and he didn't seem to care about being L's successor either. I know now that with his total lack of feelings, he had no drive to do much of anything, determination a completely foreign concept to little Near; he tried, yes, but not nearly as hard as Mello seemed to, and that only fueled his rage. The only reason Near was making an effort to become L was because there was simply nothing else he could do outside of Wammy's. And that made Mello _furious_.

Who was this boy, the boy who was perfect without even trying, the boy who never smiled or laughed or even cried, not even when Mello used physical force? Who was this boy who wouldn't even dignify Mello's presence with anything but an empty stare of a short simply-worded sentence?

Mello didn't understand Near. How could he have? I sure as hell didn't either. Near didn't usually speak unless spoken to, Near didn't play with other children or have any friends. He barely even acknowledged anyone besides Roger, and that was only when he needed something. To us, Near was always a mystery, some kind of alien, or maybe a robot, because surely no human could be so damn _empty_.

But what we didn't know then was that it was impossible for a person to be completely neutral. No one could ever destroy the brain's natural reactions, no one could feel nothing. Near felt a great deal more than we thought possible.

What Near felt was not anger, like Mello. It was not defiance, like me. It was not righteousness, like L or Kira.

Near felt loneliness, self-hatred, desperation, confusion, desolation-and most of all, love.

Brutal, one-sided, barely logical love.

Sometimes I wonder if Near ever cried when he was alone. Could the robot boy really rewire all of his circuits and wash away this undesired obsession? Could he really not allow himself even a single tear?

Okay, let me back up a bit. This is getting way too poetic for me.

Imagine what being Near must've been like. Imagine being the pale white-headed boy, buried in soft folds of baggy white pajamas, one knee pulled delicately up to your chest while your fingers twirled a lock of your snow-white curls. All your life you told himself you could never fall in love. In the never-ending war of crime and punishment, there was no room for romance, and for a while, that mindset worked out pretty well. Until you grew up a bit, and started noticing the world around you, or more specifically, a certain blond boy with a fiery temper that clashed violently with the soft blue of his eyes.

He was a feisty one, alright. He would yell at you and call you mean names, which you didn't mind all that much. He always wore black and it looked pretty good with his sun-kissed skin and sweet-as-honey hair, with that crappy pageboy haircut you never really understood. He was a about a year older than you, and much more physically mature, with a thin but still muscular frame that made you wonder if you'd ever grow into your pajamas, because you'd been tiny all your life and at this rate you were never going to be big enough to be intimidating like he was.

He hated you. You'd always known that. He hated you because you were number one and he wasn't. He was jealous of your position, of the praise you received even though you were only just a hair above him.

You didn't hate him, though. You actually kind of liked him, although it was sort of a stretch to use that word. "Like" didn't describe what you felt towards him. He was always so colorful and alive, with bright hair and eyes like the sea and little barely-there freckles scattered like stars across the galaxy of his skin. Everything he felt was displayed on his face in intimate detail, in every word he said, in his expression, in the little wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled. You liked the way his eyes lit up when he got a better grade than you on some minuscule school assignment, and sometimes you missed a question or two on purpose just to see that look on his face when he, for once, came out on top.

He was everything you were not. He was fire and you were ice; he was lust and you were innocence.

His determination amazed you. He wanted to be L more than anything in the world, and there was a fire within him that you simply didn't have. You couldn't have it, of course: you'd already snuffed out whatever sparks had began flickering in you a long time ago, and there was no turning back now.

You didn't understand him. He was a mystery to you. But he was easy on the eyes and you were lonely and young and a little hormonal and you liked him. A lot.

You knew you shouldn't bother liking him. It could obviously never happen. Even if Mello liked you, it was too dangerous for the both of you to be in love. It was just end in more hurt and chaos than if you shoved down that fluttery sensation you got in your stomach when you looked at him for too long and dismissed it as nothing more than unavoidable side-effects of the horrors of puberty.

That was what Near's life was like. Hopefully that put it in perspective for you a little better.

What Near had thought was just a some girly teen crush was actually something much bigger than that. He was sure of that the moment Roger grimly informed them of L's untimely death in the middle of the war against Kira and he watched Mello's entire world shatter around him. He'd been preparing himself for this for years, because he knew that L would someday die and either he or Mello would have to take over. He'd been grieving L for years by then.

Mello, however, had not anticipated L's death, even though somewhere in the corners of his mind he knew that L would die someday, but he idolized L so much that he couldn't fathom the thought of him dying. He couldn't imagine the man who he'd romanticized into some kind of god could just drop dead one day. And he definitely couldn't imagine that even though L had jailed so many criminals and righted so many wrongs, he could still die just like any other human being.

Mello told me how he found out about L's death once. He told me that Near hadn't even blinked and had made some metaphor about puzzles or something. I doubt he was listening to what Near actually said. Well, whatever happened, it was bad. That was the day Mello stormed right out Wammy's front door, except this time he didn't come back.

Something in Mello changed that day. Actually no, "changed" isn't the right word. That day something in Mello surfaced. That crackling flame within him started to burn, melting him from the inside out. A rage that had not been present before ripped its way from Mello's soul like some kind of demonic creature with a taste for blood and guns.

After that, Mello left. And that was that. He didn't say much of a goodbye to me, just that he was leaving, and I didn't question him because I sort of knew something like this could happen someday. I knew Mello had responsibilities that came with being a successor to L, and I was okay with that. He was still my friend and he still called every now and then to assure me he was still alive and breathing, but for the most part I didn't see much of him for years.

I don't like thinking about Mello's time with the mafia. It couldn't have been easy, and I don't even want to know what kind of disgusting shit he did to rise through the ranks and get close to that sleazebag Ross. When Mello wanted something, he got it or he died fighting. He'd do anything if it meant getting him closer to his goal. But hey, all I know is the next time Mello called to me for help, after the explosion, he was not the same angsty teenager with a larger-than-life inferiority complex he'd been before. It was almost as if his personality had been stripped away, like he was nothing more than a soul trapped in an obsolete body that didn't want to be here anymore.

No longer did he want to be L. No longer was he blinded by insecurity for his own talent. The only thing he wanted was Kira's head.

The rest is history-hopefully you know what went down, because I'd really rather not have to retell the story of our deaths. Rather uncomfortable ways to go. A chest full of bullets really wasn't what I was expecting, but I guess it wasn't as bad as having some random woman whip a slip of paper out of her bra and kill you with it.

I can only imagine what Near must've felt. At Wammy's we were not really what you could call friends. Every time I tried to be friendly with him he'd never cooperate, making some smart-ass response in that irritatingly monotone voice of his. Times like those made me understand why Mello disliked him so much. His emotional walls were so strong he couldn't even socialize on a day-to-day level. It was just too much effort for me to bother with, and I doubt I would've gotten very far with him even if I'd really tried. Mello, though, was the only one who could break through to see who Near really was. Every glance he took at Near melted away at his guard, chipping the walls he put in place years ago. Mello was the only person Near would let in. The _problem_ was that Mello supposedly hated Near.

It's kind of a tragedy, really. Near could've been a really great person, but no one ever knew. But then again, he also could've been a gigantic prick too, but we'll never know. Sure, we saw Near on a daily basis, and even spoke to him, full conversations with intellectual meanings, but we never knew who Near really was. It's weird to think of him as a casual John Doe, with fears and flaws and an actual personality. I just think it's kind of sad.

Wow, this is way more emotional than I thought it would be. Near - weird, freaky, robotic, dorky little Near - is so much more depressing than I give him credit for.

That being said, I could actually be completely wrong about everything I just said. I'm likely right, but I might not be. Near might just have been a robotic dick this whole time. He might not have ever had some emotional inner self that was secretly harboring a gay crush on Mello. It's kind of a wacky idea to entertain anyways. I like the idea of it, though. When you spend as much time as I do playing video games, you tend to get a tad bit obsessed with the plotlines. Near, when looked at as a character in some RPG game, is as interesting as they come; when looked at as an actual human, though, he's kooky, kind of frightening, and pretty hard to look at, what with that stark white hair and those god-awful three-sizes-too-big pajamas.

Maybe in some other dimension, an timeline completely identical to ours except for the moment Kira picked up the Death Note, things could've been different. Maybe Mello would decide to work with Near, or maybe L would force him to. In a world without the Death Note, I think it's safe to say things would be very, very different.

But we'll never know.


End file.
